A Sign Your Campaign has Arrived

UPDATE: I was trying to add this link earlier (pilfered from ronpaulforums.com) but for some reason it wouldn't load. Now it has. It's a call by the American Enterprise Institute for Ron Paul to return the $4.2 mill people donated to him last week:

Ron Paul is an iconoclast, a principled libertarian, and an entertaining presidential candidate, but he has gone too far. Last week he raised boatloads of money from admirers who celebrate the violent overthrow of established government. For the sake of his reputation and his responsibility to the Congress in which he serves, he should disown that support.

Is this all that the braintrust over at AEI can come up with to rationalize why Paul should give up his candidacy? A. The campaign (as noted by the poindexters at the Weekly Standard) had nothing to do with the "moneybomb" that his supporters unleashed on the 5th. B. So what if his supporters chose V for Vendetta as a theme for that day? It doesn't mean that they want a violent overthrow of the established government. Just like when someone says "I'll give them an offer he can't refuse" doesn't mean that that person wants to join the Mafia.

IMO, the author has an axe to grind with Ron Paul:

I ran across this side of Paul in my work on continuity of government. The Continuity of Government Commission issued a recommendation that there should be temporary appointments made to the House of Representatives in the extreme case of hundreds of members being killed in an attack so that the House could continue to function. Paul was the first member to oppose this recommendation; he called it "dangerous" and said that it "handed terrorists a pre-emptive victory over republican government." His piece was picked up by conspiracy theorists who accused our Commission of trying to impose a dictatorship on America.

Ahh, I see a rehashed joke coming on: What do you call 535 Congressman at the bottom of the Potomac? A good start.

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After Ron Paul's record breaking week last week, it's no surprise that there would be MSM reaction coming out this week. The Weekly Standard leads things off:

So why have America's lunatics taken such a shine to the formerly obscure Ron Paul? There's a simple explanation: Although Paul spends most of his time talking about the Constitution and such cherished old time policies as the gold standard, he's as close to an anarchist as we're likely to see in presidential politics.

...Ron Paul has taken a good, hard look around America and hates everything he sees. He hates the Iraq war. He hates the rest of our foreign policy. He pretty much thinks we shouldn't have a foreign policy. He hates our bloated and meddlesome federal government. (What's that they say about stuck clocks?) He hates abortion. He hates the Treasury and floating currency...

And so on. What the Standard story doesn't state is why Dr. Paul is gaining momentum now. He's been pushing his message for 30+ years. What has changed? As much as Barrett tries to dismiss Paul's views and his supporters as "lunatic fringe" (ok, some of them are) he doesn't say why Paul's campaign is growing.

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Wonkette published an open letter to Redstate:

This is a call for internet bipartisanship. We must bipartisan…ly declare war on the Paultards!

Redstate responded:

Bombing starts in five minutes.

Ohh noo, who knows what will happen now that Wonkette and Redstate have joined forces to ignore Ron Paul? They're like the Superfriends of sites nobody pays attention to. What will probably happen is what happened with the Pajamas Media Presidential Poll. They made so many machinations trying to exclude Dr. Paul from their poll (changing their criteria 3 times by my count) that people stopped participating in it. They will probably change it again this week now that he met their criteria AGAIN.